


If Your Phone Isn't Working, Please Call

by Stoic_Zee



Series: Amnesiacs Anonymous [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Cougar is Jensen's Mutual BFF, Crossover, Friendship, Hold the Phone, Jake Jensen is Steve Rogers, Jake Jensen is not Captain America, LITERALLY, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-The Losers (Movie), Steve Rogers is Captain America, Timeline What Timeline, Wait-what?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8850649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoic_Zee/pseuds/Stoic_Zee
Summary: Jensen has secrets...Jensen has a phone...Jensen's phone has secrets!
Cougar has probably spent too much time with Jensen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In the vague timeline of this series, this fic is set some time after the Losers learn Jake Jensen has amnesia, which is a story that hasn't been written yet.

Jensen’s phone was something of a black box to the rest of the Losers. It looked a lot like a knock-off iPhone, only it was twice as thick and dull grey instead of white. It was, as far as Cougar could tell, a completely incongruous item for a skilled communications officer to use or, for that matter, anyone with a steady paycheck to use.

Jensen also took the phone with them on missions. There were regulations against that sort of thing—while they were still with the Army at least—but the Losers all looked the other way. Clay, because Jensen’s sister had yelled at him loudly for suggesting (once) that Jake would carry a phone someone could track. Roque, because he appreciated having the option to call for an evac in a worst-case scenario. Pooch, because he could occasionally use Jensen’s secure satellite up-link to call Jolene when they were in the field. And Cougar, because Jensen was ever-so-slightly calmer when he had the phone, and a calmer Jensen was better for everyone.

(Pooch had once asked Jensen how exactly he had acquired his secure satellite link. Jensen had gotten tongue-tied, and Pooch immediately recanted the question. They were all grateful. If Jensen couldn’t provide an answer within fifteen seconds, it meant he had done something so illegal that the rest of them would be shot for knowing it was a possibility, and his super-brain had assumed they would know better than to ask and had failed to create an alibi. Or the story involved sex with his girl, and they never wanted to hear about that either, except for Aisha, who enjoyed both treasonous crimes and dudes-on-dudes.)

Jensen’s phone also doubled as a weapon and not just because of its brick-like shape and weight. The Losers learned this in a rather spectacular fashion on their fourth mission together when someone zigged when they should have zagged and all five of them ended up captured. They had been stripped of their weapons and gear and were being taunted before their impending executions.

One of their cleverer captors—at least he thought he was clever at the time—was playing around with Jensen’s phone theorizing about whose contact information would be in it. Pooch was none-too-subtly glaring at Jensen. Clay was scowling at the air probably wishing Jensen’s sister wasn’t so terrifying. Roque was frowning at everything else looking for leverage. Cougar was watching Jensen because Jensen was watching the man holding the phone the way children watched a magician. They knew something amazing was about to happen and didn’t want to miss a second of it.

The man tried a couple of “universal passwords” to unlock the phone, and when the second attempt failed, he decided to go straight for the SIM card. He cracked open the back of the phone only for it to spit something into his face. The man screamed, dropped the phone, and reached for his eyes. Even from his kneeling position Cougar could see the chemical burns already forming on the man’s skin. He was certain the man had been blinded.

It happened too fast for any of their captors to react, and the Losers were all too shocked to take advantage of the moment. Jensen’s wide-eyed, child-like expression had shifted to something more gleeful and more dangerous. The magician had performed his trick.

Another man tore his gaze away and saw Jensen’s look. He had snarled, “Think that’s fucking funny? Why don’t we see what it does to your eyes?” and scooped up the phone. Apparently he had touched the screen, which according to Jensen was enough to count as third failed attempt at entering the password, and the phone had exploded taking the man’s hand with it. That time the Losers were more prepared, and they had escaped with minimal injuries, an ultimately successful mission, and a solemn vow to never ever mess with Jensen’s phone.

(Later they had drawn straws to explain to Aisha why she should never attempt to use Jensen’s phone without permission. Roque lost and had earned the onerous task of convincing Aisha that, yes, even though he looked like that, talked like that, and acted like that, Jensen was willing and able to fuck you up and could even be sneaky about it. This was before Aisha had met Jensen’s boyfriend. She, like Cougar, could recognize the Winter Soldier on sight.)

Once the team got to know James a bit better—mostly through downtime spent at Jensen’s sister’s house but occasionally he appeared during missions in countries where they definitely weren’t supposed to be (and Clay had been spitting mad the first time it happened, resigned to it by the fifth, and almost happy about it after Bolivia)—Cougar actually caught James doing normal things like checking his phone, a phone which looked suspiciously large and out-of-date for a legendary and presumably well-paid assassin.

James had proudly displayed his phone, which wasn’t as completely terrible looking as Jensen’s since it had an actual design, a white star inside a red star inside a larger white star, printed on a sleek black case. He explained that, unlike Jake’s phone, his wasn’t designed to read biometric signatures since his left arm screwed up the readings. Cougar managed to hide his alarm. He hadn’t even known Jensen’s phone could do that.

James also showed Cougar the “Find My Boyfriend App” that Jake had invented, which was a program that connected James and Jake’s phones, and which Cougar interpreted as an international game of Hot or Cold. The program had an alert which told the phones if they were on the same continent, country, state, city, etc. and was the reason the Winter Soldier always found them so easily.

All things considered, Cougar’s initial trepidation when handed Jensen’s phone out of the blue was perfectly understandable.

“Don’t look like that, Cougs. I would never blow you up with my phone,” said Jensen. “It’s registering your biometrics, so you can answer it if I’m busy.”

Cougar was not entirely mollified by the conditional nature of that statement. He would prefer that Jensen _never_ make him explode.

“Sometimes, you have to fake your death and explosions are necessary,” clarified Jensen. “But for you, I’d do something cool like a boat or plane. Not the old exploding phone ploy.”

Cougar relented. Jensen beamed at him and turned to examine the inner workings of their currently nonfunctional car. Pooch was the one officially repairing the car. But Jensen had been metaphorically bouncing off the walls and Clay had sent him outside to prevent Roque or Aisha from literally bouncing him _into_ a wall. So Pooch was inside staring wistfully at a picture of Jolene and the baby, and Cougar was supervising Jensen.

“When does it finish?” asked Cougar after several minutes of holding very still. As a sniper, he had lots of practice at waiting patiently. It was part of what made him such a good Jensen-minder.

“It only took about a minute,” said Jensen casually. “You can snoop to your heart’s content.”

Abruptly, Cougar realized this was Jensen’s version of friendship bracelets and trust falls all rolled into one tidy, electronic package. It might even be a bit of an apology for failing to ever once mention that he was not born Jacob Jensen.

Jensen was poking at engine and reciting race car statistics letting Cougar decide what to do with this unprecedented unfiltered access to Jensen’s phone. Even Pooch, when talking to Jolene, received the phone with her number cued up and ready to dial.

Cougar’s curiosity got the better of him, and he started browsing through the phone. There was surprisingly little on the home screen. Jensen’s version of the fake app was listed as “Find My Girl,” which when Cougar clicked turned the screen blue and displayed: “You are in the same hemisphere! :) But facing the wrong direction. :(” Cougar backed out of the app and examined the rest.

One app read “Codito Ergo Sum” in black and white, which Cougar knew from Jensen’s nerd shirts was a bad joke about coding. Cougar skipped it rather than risk messing around with any of Jensen’s codes.

Cougar guessed the little blue police box was a link to a Doctor Who site, but when he clicked it, it opened up to an internal Interpol database search. Cougar exited that program as quickly as possible.

Wary of triggering any international incidents, Cougar switched to Jensen’s contact list wondering about Jensen’s friends outside of the Losers. James was at the top. Followed by Jensen’s sister, his niece, and Mrs. Abernathy.

“Who is Mrs. Abernathy?” asked Cougar.

“That’s the secretary at my niece’s school. We’re tight,” said Jake. He had acquired tools and was actually working on the car. Cougar watched him warily for a moment--the havoc Jensen could wreak with simple tools was nothing short of awe-inspiring--but was quickly distracted by the mysteries of the phone.

Cougar’s number was next, followed by Sam Wilson, and then Casey. Cougar frowned at the phone trying to recall a “Casey” from one of Jensen’s stories.

“Casey is my inside-woman at Stark Tech. She used to be a help line operator, but now she’s a supervisor and I have her direct number,” explained Jake never once looking away from the car.

Cougar couldn’t imagine a situation where Jake would _need_ technical support and was a little afraid to ask. He looked back at the phone. The next part of the list seemed straightforward. Jolene, Pooch, Roque, Clay.

One listing read “When Aisha Gets a Real Phone It Will Go Here.” Aisha didn’t trust Jensen to keep her phone secure and bought and discarded burner phones on a near weekly basis. She would give Clay her new number and the rest of the team would have to rely on him or Jensen, who had the head to remember the constantly changing digits, to relay messages.

The next unfamiliar name was listed as the Night Nurse. Cougar must have made an inquiring sound because Jensen paused in his maintenance.

“That’s Claire,” said Jensen. “She does excellent needle work. Loveliest stitches I ever had. Glad to know the skill runs in the family.”

Cougar blinked at him. “Claire? Claire Temple? _Mi prima_?”

Jensen looked over his shoulder at Cougar. “Yes?” he said hesitantly.

“Why do you have my cousin’s phone number?” asked Cougar. He had cut himself off from the rest of his family a long time ago. They were proud of his service for their country, or they had been before Bolivia. They didn’t need to know what he actually _did_ for their country.

“I didn’t go looking for your family. I know you kept your job quiet,” said Jensen quickly. “Before I joined the Losers, James and I were in New York and needed a little bit of medical attention. I only knew she was your cousin because I remembered seeing her at graduation.”

Cougar raised a brow. Jensen, of course, was referring to their graduation from Q-course. But they had not been close back then, Jensen couldn’t have done more than glimpsed the horde that was Cougar’s family. Then again, Jensen’s memory was very good.

“Night Nurse?” asked Cougar instead.

“As one of those treated by the Night Nurse, I have been sworn to secrecy,” said Jensen solemnly. “However, between you and me, that Daredevil hits like a freight train.”

Cougar’s jaw came very close to dropping. Jensen laughed like he could sense Cougar’s surprise and returned his attention to the engine. Cougar looked down at the phone and Claire’s number. He had always liked Claire. She was smart and had seen the best and the worst of humanity in the E.R. Now he wondered, if he called, would she tell him what had happened to Jensen in New York?

He debated the matter for a long time, long enough for Jensen’s muttered commentary to reach levels usually achieved when he thought he was alone, and long enough for Jensen to remove several bits from the car and shock himself. Twice. Eventually, Carlos decided any conversation with Claire would involve groveling for forgiveness on his part and that it would be best done in person.

Carlos resumed his perusal of the contact list. Skye/Daisy was one of Jensen hacker friends. She had been part of the Rising Tide before going dark—whatever that meant in hacker terms—but she and Jensen still kept in touch. Technically Jensen was part of the Rising Tide, which Clay had not approved of in the least, but the tech claimed that information was information, and it wasn’t like he ever posted secrets relevant to _America’s_ national security.

There were only a handful of names remaining: Elsa, Jack, Blitzen, Polaris, and Klaus. Clearly, some of those were codenames, and after the surprise with Claire, Cougar wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Then again, not knowing what Jensen was up to was sometimes worse.

“Las otras personas,” prompted Cougar.

Jensen, who had been comparing the efficiency of different fuel types, went silent and his hands stilled. Cougar watched him with open concern. After a minute or two, Jensen started to twitch from the effort of the suppressing his words.

“I do not _need_ to know,” he said carefully.

Jensen shuddered and the dam burst. Cougar listened to an unbelievable tale about the early years of Jensen and James’ relationship, the difficulties of freeing the Winter Soldier permanently from his creators, and the insanity that was their personal mission to wreak revenge on that same organization. Several times, Cougar wondered if he was failing to translate Jensen’s rapidly spoken English, but as the story grew more and more convoluted--never quite crossing the line of insanity that suggested it was a fabrication born of the depths of Jensen’s brain--he realized he was listening to pure, unvarnished truth.

“...and so then we ended up with a cadre of death commandos convinced we were HYDRA officers. For the past few years, we’ve been training them to be regular people under the guise of a long-term infiltration mission, which has been sort of hit-or-miss. They weren’t too sure about Jenna being Mission Control. Honestly, James wasn’t too happy about it either. But she did okay with me, and Em was thrilled about picking out their codenames.

“The real turning point was when Elsa got pregnant and all of them were flailing in panic, which you think is funny until you see it happen and then it’s just sad and kind of alarming, but Jenna really took charge. And now they all worship at her feet, which is only appropriate.”

Jensen paused and gave Cougar a nervous once-over. “Are you going to freak out? Because you have that about-to-freak-out look. I mean, it’s subtle, but it’s there. And I really want to freak out because I’ve never told anyone all of that before. Jenna knows some, and James was there of course, but that’s different from telling someone. But I think only one of us should freak out at a time, so do you want to go first?”

Cougar focused on his breathing. He was a sniper. Keeping his breaths regular and even was essential to his work. In a few moments, he was back under control. No freak-out necessary.

“I am fine,” said Cougar. He released his white-knuckled grip on Jensen’s phone. “Thank you.”

Jensen took back the phone with steady hands. All of his previous, body-shaking tension was gone. “You’re very welcome. I think I saw a bottle of tequila in one of the cabinets.”

Cougar knew the exact location of the bottle in question. He nodded good-bye and went back inside for a drink or two. He wouldn’t forget, not even half-way into a bottle of tequila, not that he would drink that much with this sort of information rattling around in his head. In a few days, after he had tucked the most dangerous bits away, he would get properly drunk and celebrate--or quite possibly mourn--the fact that he and Jensen were now the kind of friends that could borrow each others’ phones, and there was no going back.


End file.
